Aesthetics of deformation. Protagonists of Italian Expressionism

The exhibition Aesthetics of deformation. Protagonists of Italian Expressionism, hosted at the Gallery of Modern Art and conceived in view of the celebration of the centenary of the same Gallery (1925-2025), presents a selection of approximately 130 works from the Iannaccone collection in Milan relating to the artistic movement of Expressionism in Italian art between the Thirties and Fifties, from the Roman School to the Corrente group. In fact, this period represents one of the most original seasons of Italian art of the first half of the 20th century, which made a fundamental contribution to artistic research.

The exhibition, through the interesting juxtaposition between the collection of the Gallery of Modern Art, the works coming from other Capitoline collections - Villa Torlonia Museums, Alberto Moravia House Museum - and those coming from the important Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection in Milan, never exhibited in the capital, it allows us to comprehensively understand all the facets of Italian expressionism, with particular reference to the personalities and groups that operated in the cities of Rome, Milan and Turin.

The exhibition itinerary presents some of the prominent artistic personalities who, in individual paths or within codified groups, introduced, in Italy between the two wars, an anti-academic and non-conformist language, focused on the representation of subjective data interior, an anti-naturalistic color rendered with dense brushstrokes, an idea of ​​shape deviating from the "classic" canon of beauty, a clear break with tradition. And this is why often, in the paintings, the city becomes the setting for hallucinated and dreamlike visions, while the subjects, under the mirror of a deformed reality, reflect a dramatic and anguished interpretation of existence.

Among the main artists present in the exhibition, we remember: Afro, Arnaldo Badodi, Renato Birolli, Bruno Cassinari, Gigi Chessa, Filippo De Pisis, Renato Guttuso, Carlo Levi, Mario Mafai, Giacomo Manzù, Marino Mazzacurati, Roberto Melli, Francesco Menzio, Ennio Morlotti, Fausto Pirandello, Antonietta Raphaël, Aligi Sassu, Scipione, Luigi Spazzapan, Ernesto Treccani, Italo Valenti, Emilio Vedova, Alberto Ziveri. Some among these – such as Guttuso and Levi – move within more than one of these scenarios in a broader and more transversal way.

The exhibition itinerary begins in Rome, with the Via Cavour School and some of the personalities who over the years have variously defined the "Roman school" and its technical and thematic particularities, such as tonalism. The itinerary continues with some of the protagonists of the Six of Turin  group (1929-31), a group of artists gathered around the charisma of Felice Casorati and the personalities of Edoardo Persico and Lionello Venturi. The journey finally ends with the Corrente group, protagonists of a passionate lyrical expressionism in Milan since 1938. This group of young artists (Badodi, Birolli, Cassinari, Sassu, Treccani, Valenti and many others such as Manzù, Fontana, Tomea, Cantatore, Franchina), coordinated by Edoardo Persico, express themselves through a restless and emotional, extremely realistic painting.

The exhibition therefore highlights how the Italian expressionists, in full harmony with international trends - but at the same time aware of national tradition - gave life to an original and frank language, capable of effectively interpreting the anxieties of their time.

Photo credits: Arnaldo Badodi, "Caffè", (1940), oil on plywood, Iannaccone Collection